Sunday, June 11, 2006

That a leopard print nightgown was found at the site of the obliterated al-Zarqawi safe house has nothing to do with anything. It would have been more relevant to say "Weapons, clothing found at al-Zarqawi safe house". It was not enough to report a terrorist was killed in a military operation, the racy lingerie had to be specifically mentioned. Once again the mainstream media is acting the part of Official Propagandist for a governmental administration.

But for the purposes of the War On Terror, this time around guns are not as sexy as a little propaganda. "Splintered Base", how so very, very clever that is.

There are probably a few reasons why a woman's dainties are mentioned so prominently. Firstly, the insult to masculinity. The implication is that al-Zarqawi spent his time off from beheading civilians dancing around in ladies' underwear for the amusement of his fellow twisted compadres. The only results in doing this will be to make the fanatics even crazier and re-confirm in the minds of the Red State Mouth-Breathers' Coalition that the US is in a war against the destruction of good clean Xian values and what happened was that some moral decay was scrubbed from the sparkling white teeth of God's Democracy. The nightgown also casts doubt that the Little Bent Cog from the Big Crazy Death Machine was on an entirely holy mission. After all, as our homegrown evangelists have discovered it is hard to fleece lead the flock when they get caught partying down with the babes. Another reason could be that the headline may have a different meaning semantically when translated into other languages. The title might well read as something like "al-Zarqawi is a sick transvestite".

5 comments:

Do you have similar problems when people insinuate the J. Edgar Hoover was a cross-dresser?

Zarqawi's public persona was that of a devout Sunni who was the enemy of all infidels, whether they were Christian, Jewish, Shi'a, or fellow Sunnis who weren't fervent enough in their beliefs. Finding tacky lingerie in Zarqawi's hideout appears to conflict with this persona for obvious reasons.

I remember when Bush I invaded Panama and ousted Noriega. The media started reporting that they had found several pairs of women's underwear (red silk) in his possession, and that he was wearing a pair, too. I guess it's just a standard bit of misinformation to turn your enemy into a transvestite.

Yeah, I recall an account of the desk they photographed with various decadent non-Marxist goodies on display in Noriega's office. Seems the journalists were quite familiar with that desk because it got trucked in for a photo shoot every time a Central American leader was taken down by U.S. forces.

Since we pioneered so much of the art of PR manipulation, why are we always so goddamn clumsy at it?